Acosta buoyed by KTM turnaround in MotoGP 2025 after Czech GP podium

By finishing third in the Czech Grand Prix, Pedro Acosta secured both his and KTM’s first main race podium of the 2025 MotoGP campaign. With Acosta finishing second in Saturday’s sprint race as well, it’s been an uplifting weekend for the Austrian manufacturer.

That’s come after a tough start to the year for KTM, with Acosta’s frustration being a bit too obvious on occasion. It was clear, however, that finally delivering a podium this season took the weight off the 21-year-old’s back.

“It means a lot,” said Acosta in the post-race press conference. “It was not easy how we were living the first part of the season, and let’s say there was a lot of fire between us [in the team].

“When you put two strong characters at the same table, the talks are sometimes quite a mess, but sometimes we have to calm down everything and start again.

“It’s true that during the last couple of weekends we have gotten better. We are getting most consistent and every time [we are] in the top five.

“We have to keep going like this now to improve. Now it’s a case of time. Let’s wait until good things arrive to the bike and let’s wait until the Red Bull Ring.”

With Francesco Bagnaia closing in on Acosta during the dying stages of Sunday’s race at Brno, Acosta was asked how hard he was pushing in the last laps of the contest.

“I was trying 100%!” said the KTM rider. “At the end, from lap 10 to 15, I was really close to Marco [Bezzecchi].

“I was struggling a little bit with the front [tyre] and I was not able to follow him. For this [reason], I tried to manage the rear one to have some tools at the end of the race to play with.

“When I saw ‘Pecco’ was 0.8s, 0.6s [behind me], I started to push again to say ‘ok now we start to give everything we have and if we arrive with nothing, ok but minimum we have to try’.”

With Tech3’s Enea Bastianini finishing third in the sprint on Saturday aboard his KTM and all the finishing KTMs being in the top 10 at the end of the main race, the manufacturer’s form is steadily improving. Acosta described where the improvement has come from.

“In all my career I was struggling in qualifying,” explained the Spaniard. “Now, it looks like the minimum we manage to be is on the third row, which is not so good, but it’s not the disaster that it has been in the past years.

“Also this feeling is helping because last year, ok I was fast, but sometimes at the end of the races, I was struggling with not really [understanding the] electronic use or how to ride the bike with other kinds of electronics. For this [issue], it’s now helped a lot. Also in the tests, we are doing a lot of work with this and also at home.”